{"id":136,"date":"2007-10-22T10:13:09","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T17:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/?p=136"},"modified":"2012-07-08T09:35:02","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T16:35:02","slug":"babylon-2007-gloom-without-glitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/babylon-2007-gloom-without-glitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Babylon 2007 — Gloom Without Glitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

O<\/b>ne of History’s recent ironies is how the Bush Regime’s failings are helping to gestate an internal American culture of Babylonian decadence<\/a>. One must say so far it is a gloomy Babylon without much fun.<\/p>\n

Fashion is its own theater, and cabaret took center stage on the fall runways. While L\u2019Wren Scott raided Marlene Dietrich\u2019s closet, showing sharp-tailored suits and slouchy men\u2019s trousers \u2014 \u201ca girl should always have a corset in her closet,\u201d says the designer \u2014 Dolce & Gabbana added a little S-M, strapping models down with patent leather belts, their eyes hidden behind black masks. Otto Dix could have painted the louche ladies at John Galliano with their rouged cheeks, blood-red lips and smoky eyes. Not to mention the chorus line of feathers, hats and lacquered Sally Bowles-style pageboys that traipsed down the runway . . .<\/p>\n

For more degenerate art and artifice, the Box on the Lower East Side serves up enough naughty fare \u2014 led by M.C. Raven O, a modern-day Joel Grey \u2014 to frighten the neighbors who have threatened to shutter it. \u201cThis place makes people feel liberated at a time when we are back to 1950s political correctness,\u201d says the Box\u2019s co-owner Simon Hammerstein, who takes a stand against the city\u2019s current buttoned-up no-smoking, no-trans-fat mood. Political correctness hasn\u2019t deterred Spiegelworld, either, a cabaret theater that is bringing its risqu\u00e9 show \u201cAbsinthe\u201d to Miami this December. \u201cIt\u2019s just sexy entertainment,\u201d says one of the Spiegelworld performers, Julie Atlas Muz, who does a topless number in a very large bubble. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot better than watching porn by yourself.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

T<\/b>o be sure, these remain isolated pockets, experientially distant from most Americans — like stars on the galactic rim, separated by millennia of cultural time debt. Nascent decadence at best; it has not reached Peoria, as they say. <\/p>\n

Grim Without Glitter - American Babylon 2007<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

P<\/b>erhaps it doesn’t have to. American culture and technology is so distributed that there no no central nexus for transmission anymore, no means — for good or ill — for instructive signaling. America, unlike Weimar, never had High Kultur to attract talent or to define our times. No matter how encyclopedic,pronouncements from the Met can not compete<\/a> with the Home Shopping Network or Cartoon Network. And even those modes are disintegrating as younger Americans abandon “channels” altogether and search for content ad hoc. Structural breakdown like this may well be a harbinger. Even so, one can not escape noticing the milieu<\/i> is more about exhaustion and resignation than transgression.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

——————–<\/center><\/p>\n

W<\/b>e said at the outset that its all ironic. That’s because Evangelical\/Fundamentalist Christians and Neocons both use the Babylonian myth of decadence as a central plank in their quest for cultural and political transcendence. Use of the mythos is and was central to their effort to hijack the liberal democratic tradition. Babylon is how they lump everyone into the enemy “-ist” (Islamo-fascist, Secularist, etc.)<\/p>\n

Ian Buruma wrote way back in 2003 (reviewing Paul Berman’s Terrorism and Liberalism<\/i>)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There is, however, much to admire in Berman’s book too. As a general analysis of the various enemies of liberalism, and what ties them together, it is superb. All\u2014Nazis, Islamists, Bolsheviks, Fascists, and so on\u2014are linked by Berman to the “ur-myth” of the fall of Babylon. The decadent city-dwellers of Babylon, corrupted by luxury and poisoned by greed, infect the people of God with their wicked ways, even as the forces of Satan threaten the good people from afar. The people of God will only be freed from these abominations after a massive war of Armageddon, in which the city slickers and Satanic forces will be exterminated. A pure new world will rise from the burning ruins and “the people of God will live in purity, submissive to God.”<\/p>\n

As Berman says:<\/p>\n

There was always a people of God, whose peaceful and wholesome life had been undermined. They were the proletariat or the Russian masses (for the Bolsheviks and Stalinists); or the children of the Roman wolf (for Mussolini’s Fascists); or the Spanish Catholics and the Warriors of Christ the King (for Franco’s Phalange); or the Aryan race (for the Nazis).
\nAnd there were always rootless cosmopolitans\u2014Jews, Freemasons, Chinese, bourgeois capitalists, Zionists, Crusaders, homosexuals, and whatnot\u2014to destroy root and branch. The cult of death has always been at war with the desire for the good life; unity, purity, and submission always were the promised goals of zealots, once the wicked city was razed. And pockets of liberty in the world were always vulnerable to less tolerant predators. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

T<\/b>hat the Fundamentalist\/Evangelical Right and the Neocons, via<\/i>their own Unified Government, foster such a domestic dynamic? Too difficult to accept. None of the attendees at the so-called Values Summit are prepared to do so. Neocons merely blame Bush the man not the program. The word catalyst vanishes from their vocabulary.<\/p>\n

We spoke to contacts of ours in the non-Neocon Movement. They also served in the Administration. Privately they look forward to a HRC victory. First, because it relieves them of cognitive dissonance and onus for 2001-08. Second, HRC as poster woman for ‘social degeneracy’ is ideal for fund raising and base mobilization.<\/a> And they remain deeply concerned that a Rudy or Romney win would take the Movement into a lateral place, making them defend some complicated ‘Third Way’.<\/p>\n

To paraphrase the Warlord, they might welcome an outbreak of Babylonian decadence in America, saying “Bring it on.” They hope to better effect. We shall see. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of History’s recent ironies is how the Bush Regime’s failings are helping to gestate an internal American culture of Babylonian decadence. One must say so far it is a gloomy Babylon without much fun. Fashion is its own theater, and cabaret took center stage on the fall runways. While L\u2019Wren Scott raided Marlene Dietrich\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","two_page_speed":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[72,122],"class_list":{"0":"post-136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-how-to-save-democracy","7":"tag-demotic-goo","8":"tag-imperial-city","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}